Command Indecision (Lexi Graves Mysteries)

by Camilla Chafer

  "If she didn't know the person, she would stay behind the counter, be more official," Solomon continued, following my thoughts as his eyes flitted around the small reception space.

  "That's right." My shoulders slumped. It wasn't a good enough theory to throw doubt on the current suspect. "So far, that still says Tate," I said. So much for proving Tate's innocence. All my walk-through had suggested was Jillian probably heard someone enter the office. I imagined her looking up and seeing her sergeant friend, and smiling or waving and telling him she’d be right there. Maybe she powered down her computer, or put her paperwork away, and walked over, rounding the desk to give him a friendly hug. And minutes later, she was dead.

  "So, she had the door unlocked and stayed behind because she called Tate and was waiting for him. That doesn't mean someone else she knew couldn't have come by first. Someone she felt comfortable enough with to come out from behind the counter."

  "Were there any defensive wounds?" I asked. “Could she have been pulled over or around the desk?”

  Solomon shook his head. "The ME says the first blow, the kill blow, was from behind. Judging from the trajectory of the second, she would have spun around. By the second or third blow, she was definitely on the floor. There was bruising on her ribs, like someone straddled her. Got up close and personal when the perp went into overkill."

  "But still, using a bat and not his fists?" I winced as I turned away, towards the reception desk and into the offices. I looked back over my shoulder at Solomon as something occurred to me. "Why did she turn away?"

  "Maybe she was done with the conversation or going to get something? Her purse?"

  "If she was going to get her purse, there's no reason to attack her, unless it was a ruse to get her off guard."

  "I like the ‘done-with-the-conversation theory’ more," Solomon decided, taking a step closer to me and placing his hands on my shoulders, holding me still. "She tells him to go, or she’s done, something very final. In a rage, our unknown grabs something—she isn’t afraid straight off, so he doesn’t have the weapon to start with—and attacks her. The first blow catches her unawares because it’s from behind. She doesn’t see it coming. Maybe she collapses, against the counter or the floor, then gets up, turns around, gets hit again and falls." Solomon spun me around, towering over me, his hands firm on my upper arms. "Our unknown jumps her so she can't move, can't struggle, and continues to beat her until he's sure she's dead."

  "That's nasty."

  "That's murder."

  I looked across the counter. There were in and out trays, folders full of forms, and a local phone book. On the wall, there were only photographs, including those of the staff. "I don't see anything heavy enough to hit her with."

  Solomon turned in a slow circle and I watched him take in the half dozen chairs, the side table holding a neat stack of magazines, and a plant in a white pot. "Unless the killer brought it with him, something's missing. No murder weapon was found."

  "Could he have taken it with him?"

  "Probably." We took one last look around, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. "I’ve seen enough. Let's close up and take a look around outside." Solomon reset the alarm and locked the door, pocketing the keys. Aside from the door to the office, the path ended in a brick wall, too tall to jump over, even for Solomon. I couldn't see any way of scaling it without a ladder. The shrubbery was bushy and green, but wouldn't conceal much. I followed Solomon around to the front, looking down the quiet road. This stretch was office after gray office, facing onto an open green area, across from which were some buildings, already locked up tight for the night.

  "You see anywhere to hide anything?"

  I shook my head. "Nope."

  "Me neither. What do you see?"

  "I see it's very open."

  "Exactly. Would be hard to leave the crime scene all bloody without being noticed. The parking lot is over there, but he could have walked. Even quiet as it is, it would be a risk to leave, especially if I was bloody and carrying a weapon."

  We paused side-by-side, hands in pockets, surveying the area. "What would you do?"

  "Take off my shirt, wrap it around whatever I used as a weapon, and walk casually away. I'd just be a shirtless guy, taking a walk or a jog. Or if I took off my jacket, I'd just be a guy who was carrying a jacket. Nothing out of the ordinary."

  I gave him an appraising look and tried not to think about him without his shirt on. "That just occur to you?"

  "No."

  I let that one slip. "Huh. If you were in uniform, you wouldn't take off your shirt. That would be noticeable," I pointed out. "You wouldn't want to be called out for defacing your uniform."

  "True. So here's what we have. If we work it that Tate is not our killer, for no other reason than Mitch thinks not," said Solomon, waiting for me to nod, "then our alternate suspect is also known to Jillian. She wasn’t afraid of him, but perhaps she said something that antagonized him. He grabs something and attacks her, walks out, probably not in uniform, and takes the weapon with him."

  I recalled dozens of conversations over family dinners where police cases were discussed, eyes rolling, enthusiasm high and a thought caught. "I just thought of something. He takes the weapon because he doesn't want to be connected to the crime, but he's not worried about his fingerprints being in the office. He hasn't taken the time to clean the place down. The report says there was a lot to process. Lots of fingerprints."

  Solomon gave me an approving nod. This time when he smiled, his eyes flashed. "He's a regular. He expects his fingerprints not to be out of place." The smile dropped, and with a flick of his head, he motioned for me to follow. As we strolled in the direction of the apartment, following our own footsteps, he said, "This is worrying."

  "Murder usually is."

  "Actually, I was thinking it's more worrying in that our unknown could be anybody who regularly comes by the office. A civilian or personnel."

  I sighed. It didn’t narrow it down much. "This sucks."

  "You sure you want to take this job tomorrow?" Solomon asked, his voice soft, only the merest trace of worry evident.

  I bristled, imagining but failing, him asking any of my male colleagues the same question. I thought we'd gotten past this once I started bringing in, as well as solving, my own cases. I'd gotten their respect as far as I could see. Why not Solomon's? There was no way I was flaking out of an undercover job on the first day just because there was a murderer around. I knew when I took this job that it wouldn’t be all surveillance and filling out paperwork. I knew there would be situations that would test me. Shying away from them wouldn’t just make me look weak, it would embarrass my internal attainment targets.

  "No problem," I said, trying not to sound snippy, as I smoothed my hair behind my ears. "Maybe her colleagues know more than they think they do."

  Solomon caught me by the forearm, stopping me, and I turned to face him. I brushed a stray strand of hair out of my face. "I wasn't questioning your competence," he said.

  "No?"

  He looked at me, his face hardening, like he was pissed off, and I felt myself drawing away, recoiling slightly. "No."

  "No problem then," I repeated. "And you know how much I love temping."

  A smile lit on his lips and I had to turn away before my heart skipped a beat. After a couple of paces, he caught up to me, slinging an arm casually around my shoulders. "Yeah," he said, holding his hand up and crossing his fingers in front of us, the metal of his wedding band gleaming. "You and filing are like that."

  Chapter Five

  The best thing about being a private investigator is getting to do a bunch of different things and no two days are alike. In any given week, I could be conducting surveillance, following a person around in my car (which is dull and if it lasts longer than two hours, I always need to pee) pretending I'm Knightrider, covertly interviewing witnesses, or running through a ton of paperwork—blech—trying to fit puzzle pieces together. Plus, I get to sleep in late and get a
completion bonus, which is Solomon's version of both a pat on the head and a worthless plastic, commemorative trophy for being a team player. Having been a recipient of a worthless trophy in a past job, Solomon's incentives work much better.

  The downside is that I seem to get stuck with undercover office temp duty more often than I care to think about. Mostly it’s because my colleagues, with the exception of Lucas, who looks like a surfer, all look like brutes. When Solomon asked me to join the team, he told me it was because no one would ever think I was a PI. So far, he's been right.

  Undercover sounds sexy, but let me get this straight: it's not. Being undercover is like having an itch that needs to be scratched for seven hours straight. It's annoying and it won't go away. Undercover means days, nights, weekends. It means bailing on friends, missing family dinners, working my dialing thumb to a nub, while pumping my growing network for information, and getting myself into situations where people actually think it's okay to shoot at me. A good PI is like Solomon: a smooth operator. I'm more of an accidental operator. A strictly moral upbringing by my second generation Irish parents means I'm not so keen on lying to people, so I try not to. Instead, I'm just a sketchier version of myself who begs forgiveness later.

  However, as I found out when I busted a sabotage case a couple of months back, going undercover is sometimes the best way to get to know people. And if there's one thing I've learned in my years temping, it's that no one ever takes notice of the temp, so long as she does the filing, smiles sweetly and kowtows to the human furniture in the office.

  Apparently, as I presented myself at the counter in Captain Mitch McAuley's office at eight a.m., working in the administrative assistants’ office wasn't going to be the big wow on my résumé that made me want to go back to temping. Go figure. No matter what I thought of the private investigative biz, temping was worse.

  "Mitch, uh, Captain McAuley, said you'd be joining us," said Ruth, the office manager and a fellow civilian, as she handed me the sign-in book. Chestnut hair swung in waves around her shoulders and her eyes were watery and tired. "We don't usually take temps, but Mitch said your husband works on base and you've worked in an office before. Besides, we are in a pickle without..." She trailed off, her eyes straying to Jillian's desk. The bare surface was stripped of everything, but a beige computer monitor, keyboard, mouse and telephone.

  "I heard what happened," I said, offering my sympathy face.

  Ruth gave me a weak smile, one that didn't reach her eyes and gulped. "We're all so sad. It could have been anyone of us here instead of Jillian."

  "It was tragic." Tragic that she put herself in Jillian's place, instead of just feeling sorry for her; but if that's what hit her empathy buttons, far be it from me to poke that beast.

  "Absolutely." Ruth sniffed. "We miss Jillian so much. Oh, her poor sister! It doesn’t bear thinking about. Come through." She opened the gate for me and I crossed into the office. "You won't have to do all her jobs, but we'd appreciate your help with the general office duties as we're all sharing Jillian's work until we get someone permanent. So, you'll just be monitoring the desk, signing visitors in and out, running documents over to other offices on base, some typing and filing."

  I mentally sighed at the filing bomb. "Sounds great," I said, stretching my lips into an enthusiastic smile. It slid back to a normal grin after I decided no one could look that happy about filing. Ruth appraised me as though I'd just escaped a secured facility and she was calculating how many sharp instruments she needed to hide. "I'm happy to help," I tacked on, with a decisive nod.

  "Okay then. Let me introduce you to everyone. Over there is Denise, she's tour purchasing assistant, and Gretchen, in logistics and there's Tammy, but she's off sick today. You probably won't meet her until next week, seeing as you're only with us part-time. Mitch did say the job was part-time, didn't he? Jillian was earning a degree so she went to college a couple of days a week," she explained, smoothing her hair behind her ears as the other women looked up on hearing their names and gave me a nod. Ruth’s fingers shook slightly, and she seemed to need to put her hands on something, anything, because as soon as she finished fidgeting with her hair, she started to play with her blouse cuffs.

  "I can cover whatever hours Jillian worked."

  "Great. You can take her desk. We have a guest log-in you can use for the computer. It won't give you access to much, but it's enough for typing. Boring, I know."

  "Not at all. Honestly, it'll keep me busy and I’m very grateful for the opportunity. I wasn't sure what I would do for work when my husband moved here." I practiced “my husband” in the mirror while brushing my teeth and I wasn't sure I was pulling it off as casually as I wanted, but at least, I could pull it off without a nervous giggle now. I hoped Ruth put it down to newlywed nerves, especially as just saying it made me want to pull a face. Instead, I found myself playing with the wedding band. I wondered if I'd ever wear the real thing one day.

  "A lot of the wives have the same problem," said Ruth sympathetically and I looked at her sharply, having momentarily lost the plot of the conversation. Ahh, yes, my cover. "But at least, your husband is working on base, right?" she pressed.

  I nodded. "Where's your husband?" I asked, aiming to keep my tone light as I noticed Ruth toying with her wedding and engagement bands.

  "Iraq," she said. "He's halfway through his tour."

  "Halfway to home," I replied perkily and Ruth smiled, happily this time, while nodding.

  Over the next half hour, Ruth talked me through what they did in the office, explaining that even though we were on an Army base, admin was much the same as anywhere else. I wouldn't have access to anything confidential, so I only needed the most basic of security checks. How they'd gotten through overnight I didn't know, but I'd put money on Lucas or Captain McAuley. However, she did remind me to wear my visitor's badge at all times while I was working.

  As I took the sheaf of files that landed on my desk, courtesy of Denise along with a silent-mouthed apology, over to the filing cabinets, I wondered if Solomon was making any progress at the gym.

  Over a strangely companionable breakfast of cereal and fruit, he told me he planned on finding out who Tate's friends were, and, conversely, whether he had any enemies. Solomon's angle was that he might have talked to one of them about any concerns he had, or about what had really happened with Jillian before he was arrested. Maybe he even mentioned why he was meeting her while he worked his shift at the gym that day.

  My job ran a similar angle. I was simply to get to know Jillian's co-workers to find out if she'd mentioned any concerns or worries, especially about Tate, and to see if anything was missing from the office, anything that could have been used as a murder weapon. Per our discussion, if we knew what we were looking for, we might have a better chance of finding it. Privately, I wasn't too hopeful. If I'd just murdered someone, I'd destroy or dispose of the murder weapon as fast as possible; and ten days was a cold lag where it could have ended up in a dumpster miles away. That was if we were lucky. We just had to hope that the sudden flurry of activity surrounding Tate's arrest had made things difficult for the real perpetrator, if there even was one. Why Tate was giving everyone the silent treatment still puzzled me. If it were me, I’d be pacing the room like a wildcat, telling anyone who’d listen that the murder had nothing to do with me. I’d demand a lawyer, and tell them anything they wanted to know, just to be let go. They wouldn’t even have to shine a spotlight on me. What I wouldn’t do was refuse to say a thing.

  I plodded through the filing, while listening to the various phone conversations and inter-office talking. The morning alone let me discover quite a few things. For starters, the sick-leave-taking Tammy wasn't well liked in the office because she slacked off and took too much sick-leave, leaving everyone else to pick up her load. No one added “on top of Jillian’s,” but the unspoken words hovered like a blimp in the air.

  While Ruth was married, Gretchen wasn't, and the latter was fond of calling out,
“Cutie, three o'clock” whenever an attractive male walked past the office, which made Denise's eyes roll superciliously. Denise was engaged to a desk-bound soldier and planning a summer wedding. They were all chatty, though I’d yet to work in a question about Jillian’s sister, whom Solomon was determined one of us should make the acquaintance of.

  "How do you like living on base so far, Lexi?" Ruth asked, drawing me into the conversation which revolved around their weekend plans as she passed around coffee.

  "It's okay," I said, thinking about how Solomon was already showered and dressed by the time I got up. The shower was still damp by the time I made it in. I had a record-fast wash and a quick cry before cursing Maddox under my breath. "Our apartment is tiny, but at least it's on base so I don't need a car."

  "Where do you usually live?"

  "Montgomery," I answered, because the only thing easier than lying was being honest. I wouldn't have to make up a thing about Montgomery, I could just omit that I lived there alone, unmarried... unwanted. Oh, mental pity party, thanks for stopping by.

  "Oh, nice. We go there sometimes to that mall just on the outskirts. The one with the big skylight."

  "I know the one."

  "Remember when we all went to that club? The one with the topless waiters?" reminisced Gretchen.

  "Pecs," I filled in helpfully. Lily was fond of the place too. Me? I could take the cocktails and leave the hordes of goggle-eyed women that crowded the bar in search of man meat.

  "So funny. They dragged Jillian on stage and..." Gretchen choked to a stop and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she searched her desk, found tissues and dabbed her eyes, sniffing loudly. "Sorry. I just keep forgetting, you know."

  "It must be really hard for you all, working in here when..." I nodded towards the reception area where Jillian's body was found.

  "It's awful, just awful," agreed Gretchen as Ruth, clearly the maternal one of the office, passed her a plastic cup of water from the cooler. Gretchen gulped it down.